


The Long Way Home

by rundmc1026



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-25
Updated: 2018-10-25
Packaged: 2019-08-07 07:23:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16403885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rundmc1026/pseuds/rundmc1026
Summary: The Legends somehow win by using a giant blue stuffed toy named Beebo.  Ava thinks it might be the craziest thing in her life, but that’s okay because her life isn’t normal and she wouldn’t want it any other way.OrThe eleven times the Ava Clone dies and the one that finally lives.





	The Long Way Home

1.  
The very first Advanced Variant Automation, aka Ava, to join the Time Bureau isn’t even the first clone to do so, nor is she the original.

The original Ava was dying from a disease, and granted her body for science to Rip, in which he began the cloning.

Rip Hunter decided to travel to 2213 where they had enough futuristic technology to make clones; clones which could help domestically, military, or with anything, really. But he personally wanted one to be the perfect Time Bureau agent. He started with a batch of twenty clones. When one of them failed, he slightly modified them each time to meet his standards each time. The early batches, well, they were discarded.

  
He succeeded in making the domestic helpers, and the military clones of Ava, but he was struggling with making the one to be his agent. He needed a perfect clone- one that wasn’t of the other type’s nature, one that could fit in everyday life better and not stand out.

  
He was positive that this Ava would be ready to join his Time Bureau agency. Rip is in desperate need of good agents, so why not have a good agent which is expendable, can easily be replaced, or modified to avoid the previous model’s failure?

He knew that morally, this was wrong, but realistically, a clone’s life is far more expendable than a regular human agent.

Anyway, things actually end up going terribly wrong, because maybe Rip made a mistake and maybe this batch of clones was still too militaristic in nature, because the Ava clone coldly turns around, glaring at him with no trance of any human recognition, but then again is she truly human, and she grabs his neck forcefully, choking him.

“Why do I need to take orders from you, I am better than you!” She declares very robotically, and Rip has just enough time to reach his gun and discard her, like many others. But he feels a gut-wrenching sadness because he just killed someone. He knows he had discarded others just like her, but he had hope for this one and this is the first one he has personally pulled the trigger on. But he stops himself and remembers she’s just a clone and that all he needs to do is modify the next one to have less militaristic emotions and more human ones. He thinks that he could ask Gideon because she never tried to turn on him and was capable of human recognition on some level, despite not having emotions.

He also thinks that somebody should really clean up this mess.

2.  
Since the Time Bureau has the Waverider in their possession, Rip does end up asking for Gideon’s help and that is how File 354-Z starts. The beginning of finding a perfect agent.

This Ava has more human recognition than the last one and it’s a good step in the right direction. She actually makes it to the Time Bureau Headquarters this time. Rip believes she’s ready for field work since he had programmed the clones to be able to fight. So, he gives her the Time Courier and the mission details of an anachronism in Pompeii, specifically the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79AD. Apparently, a species of animal goes extinct at that time and it’s Ava’s job to get the animal out safely. It should be a very basic, easy mission.

She’s able to successfully save the animal from some hunters and the critter takes off frantically to safety. Ready to return, she taps her Time Courier, but nothing happens. Because she doesn’t have emotions, she doesn’t panic per se, she just tries each button on the watch methodically, despite the volcanic eruption right behind her.

Rip realizes that maybe next time, he should teach the next Ava how to use the Time Courier so she doesn’t get stuck in an eruption.

3.  
Rip Hunter doesn’t usually get scared, but he is. He realizes that the time anachronisms are part of something larger. After a lot of research, he is able to put a name to this mystery- Mallus, essentially, a time demon who grows more powerful with each anachronism. Rip realizes now that the he needs the Legends again and maybe it wasn’t a good idea to disband them. But he also realizes that the new Ava, working in her office across the hall from his, needs to learn about the Legends, so he gives her a file on each one.

She only makes it to Hawkgirl and Hawkguy’s files. To her they seem somewhat useless and not very beneficial to the team. They seemed too wrapped up being soulmates to be much use to anyone else. The file mentions this word “soulmate” a lot, as well as “love” and she realizes she doesn’t know what either of those words mean. She doesn’t understand the emotions behind them.

However, she doesn’t get a chance to ask Rip, because all the agents seem to be in a panic and somebody screams “monkey!”

 

“I’m a Gorilla, stupid human.”

4.  
Honestly, Rip has never been happier to see a Speedster in his life, than when Barry Allen, aka The Flash shows up and saves the bureau from gorilla Grodd. The only downside is a good man named Agent Walker and Ava die in the attack. So not only does he need to replace Ava, he needs to find a new regular agent.

It takes him awhile to find a new agent, but he eventually finds Gary Green. Rip knows Gary is not the best field agent. But he admires the man’s empathy and the way he exudes it around the office, bringing other agents’ spirits up in the process.

5.  
In 2042 the nation is a police state, under the control of A.R.G.U.S. At this time, they began to hunt metahumans. This is also the time period from which the Legends would rescue Zari. But Ava and their paths don’t cross just yet. Ava opens a portal close to A.R.G.U.S agents who thinks she has some type of metahuman abilities, so they arrest her before she even can touch her Time Courier to open a return portal. She was only there because of a time assassin named Kuasa, who was not supposed to be in 2042, let alone take anyone out of time.

But Ava is arrested and brought to the metahuman jail, where A.R.G.U.S agents decide to exterminate the wing of the floor containing her cell.

6.  
To some degree, Rip feels better about this death. Ava goes rock climbing with her parents. They are not actually her parents, just actors who Rip hires to pretend to be her real parents. But that’s not really the point. Her foot went awry and she slipped. But the reason he feels better is that at least she died doing something other than Bureau work. It showed him that she was adjusting to society better and she knew how to operate in it. She didn’t stand out anymore and that was a large positive in this situation. He makes an adjustment to the next Ava, not to have emotions, but to have enough knowledge of everyday events like tv shows, and current music and films so she can hold her own in conversation with other agents.

7.  
Rip remakes Ava every time with the same memories, but wipes the parts about her dying and how she died so it seems like her life is still a linear thing with (fabricated) memories. But she doesn’t have to know that. She integrates more with society and nobody would ever realize she is a clone. She can hold a conversation better, but she’s still fully work oriented; that’s the way Rip made her, anyway. She doesn’t have feelings or emotions. Rip feels like he should change that, but he needs her to be the way she is. He needs someone orderly in the Time Bureau so it doesn’t fall apart. He needs to know it’s in good hands for whenever he dies. The Bureau is the most important thing he has since his wife and son died. He wants to make sure it stays that way; that it’s protected by someone he trusts. Rip needs someone too, in case Mallus ends up getting stronger. There are more anachronisms then ever before; Rip knows Mallus is feeding off them and getting stronger. Rip knows he’s starting to become obsessed with finding out where Mallus is and putting an end to the creature, but he can’t bring himself to stop. Yet he doesn’t want anyone else dying on his watch, that he could have prevented.

But then he gets a call and he’s going to have to try again. Because the current Ava just got killed trying to rescue a time anachronism. Apparently, a corgi was seen riding on the back of a T-Rex. He has to send another team to get the dog, but they eventually do. He thinks that even though this anachronism was a little one, that the next Ava will be able to handle more difficult missions. After all, not every time anachronism is going to have to deal with a T-Rex, right?

8.  
The new Ava picks up right where the last Ava left off. So, Rip wipes the memories of the agents who saw her die and her memories of dying. He wipes them short enough so they never went on the mission, to them, the corgi/T-Rex never even happened. He didn’t change anything else about this Ava, either. But it becomes exhausting, remaking her and wiping other agents’ memories. He thinks he is starting to lose it, because he’s the only one that knows what’s going on with her.

He itches to tell someone else.

This Ava makes it really far with the files on the Legends. She’s gets through the Hawks, Heatwave aka Mick Rory, The Atom Ray Palmer, Citizen Steel, Nate Heywood. She reads about how they took Vixen, Amaya Jiwe out of the early 1942s and how she joined their team. About how Captain Cold, Leonard Snart died a hero. She even reads about Martin Stein and Jefferson Jackson, aka Jax, and how they are somehow linked with their minds and bodies merging together to become Firestorm.

She’s reads the files with no emotion, she just takes in the facts. Rip keeps his file off the folder because she doesn’t need to know that he started this rag- tag group. But before she can get to read the files on the captain, Sara Lance, Ava is called in on a mission to observe how Team Flash and Arrow handled Vandal Savage. She needs to learn what to do with someone that can’t travel through time. Ava, however, is too close to the church where Barry, Oliver, and Vandal are fighting and she is caught in Vandal’s explosion, as Barry and Oliver run to safety.

Rip doesn’t know if he can do this anymore; put on a smile and act as if he didn’t just go to a facility and get a new Ava.

9.  
Once again, he leaves Ava the same because last time was a fluke accident and besides that, it actually went fine. He fixed her memories however, so she didn’t die and carried the mission out wonderfully.  
This Ava doesn’t necessarily die because of a mission, but rather that her time ship wasn’t checked thoroughly by maintenance and it just happens to explode.

10.  
The Time Bureau provides minimal help with the Dominators, but they do make sure there are none left. In doing so, Rip had Ava finally team up with Gary in the field to hope he would be more orderly and studious with his field work. Everything goes fine until they find the Dominator. Things start to go really wrong when they underestimated its power and Gary is screaming. Ava is trying to calm him down when she is killed in her attempt t help him. Rip has to wipe Gary’s short-term memory, as well as Ava’s. He decides Gary is better suited to handling low-level anachronisms. He knows that the death of that Ava was just a fluke. Ava can handle herself now; the death was mostly Gary’s fault for not handling the situation well.

11.  
Rip really hopes this is it the final time, but it’s not. And he doesn’t know that yet. But Ava has read all the files and finally makes it to the captain of the Legends, Sara Lance. She reads everything on her. How she has died multiple times, been resurrected, how her sister died, as well as about the bloodlust and the League of Assassin’s. She reads literally everything on Sara. Yet Ava can’t just take this information and move on like nothing. It’s too much for her, yes, this woman has messed up time. She’s the enemy in the eyes of the Bureau. But Ava can’t comprehend at all how this woman is still standing, let alone a captain.

Rip realizes that this is against her programming; Ava didn’t just read the facts and move on like she’s supposed to. He doesn’t know if it’s a good or a bad thing. But he decides to focus on Sara’s negatives to make sure Ava knows the Time Bureau is not to make friends. He want her to know that Sara should be arrested for single handily using the Spear of Destiny to change time. Ava doesn’t need to know that Rip was right there, beside Sara, encouraging her to do it.. Ava needs to get back to work.

So, Ava is sent on a mission to deal with a high level anachronism. But it goes wrong, as so many others and Rip has to make a new Ava.

This is the last time, he says to himself, but he has said many times before.

12.  
After everything Rip has gone through, he hopes this is the one.

He can’t help but feel worse every time one of the clones, no-Ava dies. He wishes the cycle would stop; the clones were supposed to be perfect.

She had all the other Ava’s memories, including reading the files on the Legends. This time she knows she’s ready to go after the Legends, but that’s when they just so happen to come to her. Ava had a gun pointed at the Legends, including Sara. But Sara gets under Ava’s skin just like Sara always does. Rip can see a flash of emotion in Ava’s eyes. She’s angry that this woman is talking back to her. But there is also awe of Sara hidden somewhere within Ava for the very same reasons. Rip realizes that for the entire time, he missed out on her connections to other humans. Emotions in general, she needed. If she doesn’t have the emotion of fear during a mission, that’s good, but it’s also bad, because if she lacks fears she bound to go head first into something and not strategically plan the mission. She needs emotions and she needs to know when to use them or not. But it’s too late to fix her and he doesn’t plan on killing her either, just to fix the problem.

But for Ava, this sudden influx of emotions fades away as she unwillingly does more missions with the Legends. She is forced to save them from drastically messing up time. But something in her has some type of awe of Sara. She thinks she hates Sara, andt she doesn’t really understand why she’s feeling this way. It’s confusing to her, so she lashes out more at Sara. She threatens to shoot down the Waverider if Sara didn’t surrender Zari, for example.

But then something happens and Rip is forced to step down. His fixation with Mallus made Damien Darhk a dangerous foe come back to life, and the Time Bureau can’t have that. Despite not being director yet, Ava finds herself more in charge of the Time Bureau then the actual director, who is hardly ever there.

Somewhere in all of this, the Bureau and the Legends come to form some type of truce. They realize they need each other’s help to take down all the anachronisms. Also, the Legends terrifyingly learn that Mallus is real and they personally feel his presence. They think maybe it has something to do with Sara being resurrected a few times. Ava starts to feel like she needs to protect Sara from this Time Demon, because grudgingly, the Bureau needs the Legends. But she always feels like there’s more to it than that. She wants to ask Rip, but he doesn’t work there anymore

Then Martin Stein dies, and one half of Firestorm is gone. Ava sees Sara trying to hold it together for her team. She’s doing mission after mission, trying to squash the feeling of grief and sadness. She’s being a leader and that’s when Ava comes to realize that maybe they are more alike than she thought. Despite Sara messing up time, maybe she had her reasons, maybe it’s not for Ava to judge. They are both leaders and do whatever necessary to make sure the mission goes through orderly. Ava can see that Sara is the one that keeps her team in line. Ava starts to feel like they personally could work together and that’s when she offers her condolences to Sara about Stein as her version of an olive branch.

Ava can see that Sara going up against the Darhks is suicide, but the Time Bureau director refuses to help. Tthat’s when Sara begs her to stay and help. Ava tells her plainly that she can’t help. She’s bound to the Bureau. But then a short time later, Ava comes back to help and ends up saving Sara from the portal to Mallus. Sara’s eyes are wide with shock that Ava actually came back to help; she’s grateful to see her. Actually, Sara is pretty impressed that Ava directly went against an order from the Bureau.

Ava feels that she did the right thing, even though she went against the Time Bureau. She’s not sure why, but she feels that she can’t lose Sara. Ava has never felt more alive and she’s gone rock climbing. That’s when Ava starts feeling a stirring in her chest for Sara like a type of admiration. But she feels as if it’s more than that. She realizes that she can’t be without Sara, which is crazy because she needs to put work first.

Her judgements about Sara where wrong. Sara turned out to be totally the opposite then what Ava planned for. Ava was used to her job being so orderly and planned out, but Sara was the one thing that threw everything out of order. Surprisingly, Ava found she didn’t mind it. She quite liked it, actually. Then they begin to tease around something for a few missions. When all of a sudden, Ava is falling fast for Sara like this is the first time she’s ever felt this much love. Ava knows she has an ex but it never felt right, like she couldn’t love her. It was as if she didn’t process the emotions enough to love anyone. But with Sara, it is totally different and then they have a date. They start arguing about Sara not being normal, to which Ava replies that she doesn’t care if Sara’s not normal. Because really, what about their jobs or anything about their lives is normal?? They end up kissing and Ava knows this is right, that she’s longed for this type of security and safety. She always has felt alone, but she couldn’t put her finger on why.

Rip tells Sara that Ava is special. He doesn’t tell her that she wasn’t made to feel or really have any emotion. Sara apparently brought emotion out of Ava. He’s not really surprised that she was able to, because Sara feels so much, even though she tries to hide it, which is why she is special. too.

Then Sara almost gets lost to the demon Mallus. Ava knows she can’t lose her so she’s there crying and begging for Sara to came back. She tries to fight back against the demon and regain control of her body. Ava puts her hand on Sara’s heart to let her know she’s really there and she’s not losing her. And Sara comes back

But then she does lose her. Because Sara fears what she could become with Mallus’s hold on her,so she breaks up with Ava to protect her. Ava, who has never felt this much in her life, takes the break up very hard.

Then Sara, Ray, and Gary find the cloning facility. Sara was so sure Ava knew about everything, but she didn’t. She didn’t know anything. Her whole life had been a lie; fabricated memories. Sara’s heart hurts for her. Sara, who spent so long trying to forgot her past, now has Ava, who only longs to know the truth of her past.

  
Rip tells Ava the truth about everything. That’s she’s the 12th try. That he’s fabricated her memories. But he doesn’t really explain why he did it. But by then Ava doesn’t want to hear anymore words come out of his mouth anyway. Her whole life has been a lie and she can’t even hold on to Sara because what if her feelings for her weren’t even real, either. What if her feelings for Sara were fabricated, too? It’s too much for her and she understands why Sara broke up with her. Because now Ava feels the same way; she would only hurt Sara.

But then Mallus happens. He’s alive and is a huge demon that could easily kill any one of them. Sara’s life being in danger makes Ava feel that pull again. So, Ava goes to help her and even with a few days to process everything, Ava knows that her feelings for Sara aren’t fake. They are the most real thing she’s ever felt. She needs Sara. She can’t be arguing with Sara. Especially if it’s possible Sara could die in the fight against Mallus. So, she goes to tell her she loves her before the final battle, but they are interrupted and the battle happens. The Legends somehow win by using a giant blue stuffed toy named Beebo. Ava thinks it might be the craziest thing in her life, but that’s okay because her life isn’t normal and she wouldn’t want it any other way.

She knows she’s real and that in time she will get answers, but for right now this is where she belongs, in Sara’s arms.

In the final moments of Rip saying goodbye to Sara, he knows this Ava is special. This Ava is going to last. This Ava is the Ava that will protect the Bureau. This Ava is more than he ever hoped for and he’s proud of her. In the end, her imperfections are what made her perfect


End file.
